Tornadoes add to Bangladesh's woes

`At the state-run Netrakona Sadar Hospital -- overrun with tornado victims -- some beds held three or four patients, while many more people curled up on cloth mats in the corridors.'

All through the day there had been signs a storm was coming: The heat was stifling, the sky windless and dark clouds hung over a string of villages in central Bangladesh.

But no one expected what came.

Ambia Khan was making dinner when she heard a roaring sound Wednesday evening. "Suddenly it went dark," Khan said, cuddling a small child as she spoke.

``Then our whole world disappeared," she said.

When the tornado hit, the family rushed for shelter.

When the tin roof of their hut was blown away, they hid under the bed.

When the winds broke the wooden bed and slammed it back down on top of them, there was nowhere else to hide.

"We saw trees and tin roofs spiraling up and then blowing away," Khan said.

As she spoke, her husband, Molayem, slept nearby on a torn quilt on a mud floor -- all that remains of the family's tin and bamboo house.

This village of nearly 400 households was the worst hit by Wednesday's tornadoes, which killed at least 69 people as they tore across Netrakona district, 130km north of the Bangladesh capital, Dhaka.

The storms destroyed more than 3,000 tin-roof and mud-and-straw huts, leaving about 15,000 villagers homeless, authorities said. Nearly 1,000 people were injured, many of them hospitalized with broken limbs.

Seventeen of the dead were from Kanchanpur, but with many people still missing, the death toll could go higher, a village official said.

The body of Sahera Akhter's son, Latif, was found in a bamboo grove a few meters from the spot where the family's home once stood.

Latif, 24, worked in a plastic factory in Dhaka and had returned home to marry.

"We hid under beds and shut our eyes when the tornado hit," said Akhter, who has five other grown children.

"The wind must have flown my son away," she said.

Beside her, Latif's new wife, 18-year-old Majeda, sat silently on the ground, slowly rocking. They'd been married just three months.

Kanchanpur is a poor village set amid green rice paddies in one of the world's most stubbornly destitute nations.

Bangladesh is a country often visited by tragedy, where yearly monsoons often kill hundreds of poor villagers, and leaves millions more homeless.

Most people in Kanchanpur are farm laborers or rickshaw pullers.

It was rickshaw pullers who were first to carry the injured to the nearest town, Netrakona, about 3km away, before authorities requisitioned trucks and buses as ambulances.

About 100 critically injured were later sent to a larger hospital nearby.

The destruction was stunning.

A day after the tornado ripped through, trees and bamboo stalks, bent or snapped like sticks by the tornado's force, littered the village.

Some trees had been blown out of the ground and then been thrust back into the earth upside down.

Corrugated tin roofs were crumpled like tinfoil, broken pottery and furniture were strewn everywhere -- including some pieces stuck high in tree branches. Dead fish from a nearby pond and chicken carcasses were scattered among the debris.

The tornado carried away anything it could: rickshaws, storage pots, chunks of earth, people.

Most of the dead were covered in mud, with their clothes shredded or ripped off, said Nurul Islam, a policeman who was one of the first rescuers at the scene.

By Thursday, most families had found some sort of shelter, often in makeshift sheds made from bamboo, tin and cloth.

Police and border guard units, with the help of local volunteers, were distributing food, water and clothes and offering first aid.

No one was even bothering to keep track of the injured, who continued to stream in and out of temporary medical huts.

At the state-run Netrakona Sadar Hospital -- overrun with tornado victims -- some beds held three or four patients, while many more people curled up on cloth mats in the corridors.

Some moaned, while others just stared silently, still in shock.

One patient, who gave his name only as Nazrul, squatted on the floor eating a meal of rice and chicken curry.

Nazrul, who had white gauze bandages covering his head, said he was hit by a falling wooden beam as he covered his five small children with his body inside their hut.

The next thing he remembers is waking up in the hospital.

He still doesn't know what happened to his family.